November 30/10 8:52 am - International Track Cycling Season to Kick Off in Melbourne

Posted by Editoress on 11/30/10

Canada's strong track cycling team is looking for more international cycling success.

Canada's track cyclists are ready to kick off the 2011 season at the first UCI World Cup event of the 2011 campaign after a series of intensive summer training camps. The season will feature four World Cup events on four different continents, capped off by the 2011 UCI Track World Championships in the Netherlands.

"The team is ready to perform and contend for medals. We spent quality time as a team preparing for the season in a series of training camp this summer," said Richard Wooles, head coach of the Canadian track cycling team. "Our training data has shown an improvement between 3 and 10 percent in performance on average, which is promising and exciting as we enter this new season."

Warming up trackside

The team, headlined by two-time World champion and five-time Canadian champion Tara Whitten, will be looking to strengthen their international results at the four UCI World Cup events in advance of the season-ending 2011 UCI Track World Championships, to be held in Apeldoorn, Netherlands March 23-27, 2011.

A total of eight cyclists will travel to Melbourne, Australia, to hit the track of the first World Cup event of season on December 2-4.

The team is expected to partake in the four UCI World Cup events of 2011, held in Melbourne (Australia), Cali (Colombia), Beijing (China) and Manchester (Great Britain) throughout the winter.

The track cycling team spent valuable time this summer at their training base in Los Angeles, California, where they focused their efforts on improving their performances. For specific training times the team was joined by a competent group of Integrated Support Team (IST), comprised of sport psychologists, sport science specialists, medical personnel and mechanical support experts.

Zach Bell

"We were asked on Day One to imagine ourselves at the 2012 Olympics while someone comes up to us and asks us: 'So, what did you do the past 18 months that made the biggest difference?' Our Integrated Support Team made the trip down to Los Angeles to meet and work with us. They were track side for our training sessions, giving us feedback and suggestions. [...] I look forward to taking everything I can from each session, capitalizing on it, and applying it to my preparation for London 2012," said Laura Brown of Calgary.

The track team has risen to new heights over the last few seasons, and are now contenders for medals in many events on the track. The team had success at the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi, India, with a total of five medals.